Fair
by cherry-sodas
Summary: Lilly Cade was six years old when she first discovered that life wasn't fair. [AU. Embedded into the 'Arrogance and Aggression' universe.]


Fair

**OK, I'm back in the saddle (mostly). It took me almost two months to write that one shot about Jane; hopefully it won't have taken me very long to write this piece.**

**This story is about my OFC, Lilly Cade (Johnny's sister, younger by eleven months). She's the OFC I feel fourth closest to, which is why her story is the fourth volume in this "fractured fairytale" thing I've been doing. Some people have been interested in Lilly, so I figured I would finally give her some credit where it's due.**

**Content warnings for some implicit period-indicative racism because in this universe, Johnny and Lilly are biracial, and mild sexual innuendo.**

**Here we go!**

* * *

_1956_

Lilly Cade was six years old when she first discovered that life wasn't fair.

She and her big brother Johnny weren't sure if they were white – not really. Their mama was pretty pale, which made her long, thick, dark hair even more frightening against the contrast of her skin. But their daddy's skin was like theirs – a deep, rich color that wasn't quite brown, but you could never call it white. They had their daddy's eyes, and the kids in school never forgot to remind them about their eyes, as though they were bad things to have. Their folks never talked to them about where their ancestors or whatever you called them were from. The Curtis folks told their kids that their family was from England and had been in the United States since they were just the colonies. Even Dallas Winston's mother made a big deal about the fact that she was Irish, though in hindsight, it was probably just an excuse for her to get drunk during the day and forget that Dally was even there (as though she didn't do that all the time, anyway). But Lilly and Johnny were mysteries even to themselves.

That mystery didn't stop them from sitting in the balcony at the movie theater, anyway.

One afternoon in the middle of summer, Lilly and Johnny scrounged up enough coins to take themselves to a movie, though they didn't have enough money for popcorn. Lilly was pretty upset about that, and she shed a few tears near the concession stand.

"Jeez, Lilly!" Johnny said. He was always vaguely exasperated by his sister, likely because they were (ostensibly, anyhow) so different. "It's just popcorn. Ain't you glad we're here?"

"It ain't fair!" Lilly said. Her tears were multiplying by the second. "It ain't … it ain't … it ain't fair!"

"It's just popcorn!"

"It ain't fair!"

She wasn't crying about the popcorn – not entirely, anyway. Lilly was hungry and hadn't eaten in about a day because Mama forgot to cook _again_, and Lilly wasn't big enough to find her own sources of food when something like that happened. She was also crying because it had taken a long time for the two of them to find the right coins to get into the movies, and now they had to sit in the balcony, far away from the movie screen. Johnny insisted that it wasn't any different in the balcony than on the main floor; as a matter of fact, it was probably better. You got to see the whole picture that way. Ponyboy was always a little jealous of the fact that Johnny got to see the movies from higher up, apparently. Even though she was only six years old, Lilly thought was a ridiculous thing for Ponyboy Curtis to say (in a series of ridiculous things he would allege throughout his life, of course). He was jealous that Johnny and Lilly got to see the movies from higher up than the main floor? Well, Lilly was jealous that people didn't pull at their faces to make a mockery out of Ponyboy's eyes.

In the midst of all her crying about the popcorn, she felt someone nudge her in her arm. She furrowed her brow when she realized it wasn't Johnny. Before she could ask Johnny what that was, she heard someone else's voice from behind her – someone familiar.

"Hey, Lilly, relax a little, would ya?"

She turned around and smiled at Two-Bit Mathews through her tears. Two-Bit was nine years old (which, to six-year-old Lilly, felt like he was a senior citizen), but he still palled around with the younger kids – probably because he'd been held back, so he was in class with Steve Randle, anyway. Lilly had always liked Two-Bit. He was friendly, and he made a lot of jokes, even though some of them weren't funny. She looked down at his hands and noticed he was carrying two boxes of popcorn. More than that, he was holding one out for _her_.

"Heard ya cryin' about the popcorn," Two-Bit said. "So when the guy at the concession stand wasn't lookin', I swiped ya a box of your own. You can thank me later."

Lilly grabbed the box from Two-Bit and gave him a shy smile – one she'd been working on all her life.

"Thank you."

"No problem, Lil. You ever seen this movie?"

Lilly shook her head. She'd heard of _Snow White and the Seven Dwarves _before, and she knew that Ponyboy was a big fan of it. But she'd never seen it herself. She'd only been to the movies two or three times before. It would be one of her favorite places if she didn't have to sit in that stupid balcony and remind everyone that she didn't know whether or not she was white. She wished she knew. She wished she had papers she could wave around and prove it. As long as it meant she got to sit on the main floor of the movie house with everyone else in Johnny's group of friends. It was worth it for that.

"You're gonna love it, kid," Two-Bit said. "Maybe I'll come up there and join ya."

"You ain't allowed to do that," Johnny said. He pointed at Two-Bit's hair. "Look at yourself."

"Aww, shoot, 's alright. Nobody noticed me swipin' this box-a popcorn for Lilly Pad over here. They ain't gonna notice 'f I dip outta the main floor to come hang out with you guys."

Lilly wondered if she'd ever know a boy as sweet as Two-Bit Mathews. All the guys that Johnny hung around with had their moments, even Dallas Winston, who loved Johnny enough to make Lilly happy. Sodapop Curtis was charming and funny, and Steve Randle was tall enough to reach the cookies on top of the Curtis family's fridge when Johnny and Lilly would spend a few hours with them. Soda's older brother Darry was smart, and his younger brother Ponyboy could be funny when he wasn't trying to wipe his dirty hands on Lilly's dress on the playground at school. But none of them were like Two-Bit. He was warm and funny and always made Lilly feel like the guys wanted her around. It was probably because his kid sister, Katie, was Lilly's best friend in the whole world. Lilly was a little jealous of Katie, but at six years old, she didn't quite know what it meant to be jealous. She also didn't understand _why _she felt that way.

But as she watched _Snow White _for the first time, she thought maybe she finally understood. Life wasn't fair.

Even though Snow White was a cartoon character with a squeaky voice, Lilly couldn't help but think she was one of the most beautiful ladies she'd ever seen. She had lovely dark hair, pale skin, and blood-red lips … beautiful, like Lilly's mama could be when she wanted to be. But unlike Lilly's mama, Snow White found a way to be happy in the darkest of times. She knew that with a smile and a song, she could get through anything. Lilly wanted to be like her. Lilly wanted to look like her. And try as she might, she could never look like her. It was enough to make Lilly want to cry.

"You OK?" Johnny asked. He could feel his little sister start to tense beside him, and he never liked that. There was no one in the world he loved more than Lilly, though he knew he didn't always do a great job of showing it. It was just the way he was – quiet and nervous that someone would reject his affection, just like his folks had all his life. Deep down, he knew that wasn't how Lilly felt, but he couldn't make himself really _know _it.

Lilly just nodded. It was, of course, a lie. She looked back and forth at the screen and at her little trembling hands. There was Snow White – pale and perfect. There was Lilly Cade – dark and messy. She hated it. She wanted to cry, but she knew Johnny hated it when she was hurting. For as long as she could, she would keep the little discovery she made in the movie house from her brother. But she would never forget it as long as she lived.

Life wasn't fair because Lilly wasn't fair.

* * *

_1960_

Lilly Cade was ten years old when she was first allowed to trick-or-treat alone.

It wasn't as though her parents forbade her from it. They didn't really care what Lilly did, nor did they really pay enough attention to recognize that Lilly wanted to do anything. The rule about trick-or-treating with a parent was entirely imposed by Katie's mother, Mrs. Mathews. She said that Two-Bit (though she called him Keith, which Lilly found funny and unnatural) wasn't allowed to trick-or-treat alone until he was ten, and so, the rule still stood for Katie and, by extension, Lilly. It was exciting, and Lilly knew exactly what costume she would wear: She would wear a dress like Snow White.

Katie's mother made it for her and didn't ask for anything in return. Lilly was grateful to her, but she couldn't help but feel a little guilty. Mrs. Mathews had been a single mother since Katie and Lilly were nine years old, and she worked hard at the local bar to provide for her two kids. Why did she feel compelled to make a Snow White dress for Lilly? She said it wasn't any trouble because she was making Katie's costume in her spare time, too. Katie, of course, was dressing up like an ear of corn. She'd learned her silliness from her brother.

When Halloween finally arrived, and Lilly Cade put on that Snow White dress for the first time, she felt absolutely marvelous. She danced around the living room and sang like her favorite princess; by now, she'd seen _Snow White and the Seven Dwarves _about five times in the theater. It was a movie that they liked to release again and again, and Lilly was thankful. Each time she went to see it, she went with Johnny, Ponyboy, and Katie. Sometimes, if he was bored, Two-Bit even came with them. Lilly and Two-Bit had had an interesting conversation about the movie the last time they went – over the summer. Two-Bit made the point that there were seven guys in their gang (He made a point to emphasize the fact that there _were _seven guys, as Dallas Winston had run off to New York City a year earlier to escape his father, leaving his poor kid sister, Violet, behind.), and that meant each one of them had a corresponding dwarf. Certainly, Darry was Doc because he was the oldest and the smartest; Dally was Grumpy because he was the toughest and the meanest. When Lilly asked Two-Bit if he saw himself as Happy, he got very quiet and didn't answer for a long time.

"Oh," he said. "You meant Happy the dwarf, didn't ya, Lilly Pad?"

"Yeah. What did you think I meant?"

He didn't answer. He just shook his head and said that Steve was Dopey, but Lilly probably shouldn't go broadcasting that one. She giggled. She loved it when Two-Bit joked around with her. The Mathews family saw Lilly as a _choice_, not an obligation because her mama and daddy always forgot about her, and that felt all the more special.

Mrs. Mathews took some quick snapshots of Snow White and the ear of corn before they went off trick-or-treating. Soon enough, the girls met up with the Curtis sister, Sadie, and Steve Randle's sister, Jane. Unsurprisingly, Sadie was dressed like Cinderella again; Jane was a fairy princess because she finally outgrew the nightgown she used to wear to be Wendy from _Peter Pan_. It wasn't until much later that anyone saw the beautiful irony there.

As they met Sadie and Jane in the middle of the street, Katie leaned over to Lilly and said, "Jane sure does look pretty, don't she?"

Lilly nodded. She couldn't argue with that. At the time, Jane was about eleven years old, and she hadn't started dyeing her hair blonde yet. It was still this beautiful light brown color, and her skin was as fair as Snow White's. She looked more like a princess than anyone Lilly had ever seen. Lilly's own eyes flickered down to her dress. She felt silly to be wearing it.

"Hey, ladies!" Sadie said. "Nice costumes."

"Really?" Katie asked. "Mine's not too corny?"

"Katie, you're too much like your brother," Jane said. Out of the corner of her eye, Lilly thought she saw Katie turn a little red. It was odd.

"Speakin' of my brother, you got any clue where he is?" Katie asked. "He just headed out the door a couple hours ago without sayin' nothin' to me or my mom."

"He's with Soda and Steve," Sadie said. "Steve said somethin' about sneakin' beers from our folks' fridge. I told Soda not to do it, but he's in a mood where he don't listen to me. I hate it when he gets like that."

"Mom's gonna kill him if he comes home drunk again."

Lilly's eyes nearly popped out of her skull.

"Again?" she shrieked. "When's Two-Bit been drunk before?"

"Last year. He came home from a dance at school, three sheets to the wind. Mom was cryin'. Think it was on account-a Dad leavin' and Two-Bit messin' up all rolled into one. Feel kinda bad for her."

Lilly nodded. She couldn't picture Two-Bit drunk. Then again, she couldn't picture Two-Bit doing anything wrong. That wasn't because she believed he never made mistakes. She knew he was just as big a troublemaker as any of the other guys, if not more. But there was still this part of her that wanted him to be a prince – a gentleman who helped people home when they were stumbling and drunk. She didn't want him to be the town drunkard that the Disney movies left out. She was Snow White, and she wanted him to be her prince. Was it really too much to ask?

The girls visited a few houses and got some candy. When they reached a particular door (closer to the _other side of town_), a boy about Lilly's age answered the door. She vaguely recognized him from school, but she didn't know his name. As soon as he saw her, he pointed at her, malicious intent on his face.

Sadie stepped in front of Lilly, attempting to shield her from whatever was coming next. At the time, Sadie was newly twelve years old and still quite a bit taller than Lilly, who felt like a shrimp. If anyone could protect Lilly Cade, it was Sadie Curtis.

"Excuse me?" Sadie asked. "You got somethin' to say to my friend here?"

"Yeah," the boy said. "Tell your friend she's called Snow _White_, not Snow … whatever _she _is."

Lilly's heart sank into her knees. For a moment, she'd actually managed to forget. It was ridiculous that she should want to be Snow White when it was the very thing she could never be. But what _was _she? Sometimes, she felt white. When she caught a glimpse of her mother, she felt white. After all, that was where she came from. Lilly felt white when she spent time with the Mathews family and with the Curtis family. By now, based on some cultural and geographical lessons she'd had in school, she was fairly certain that her father's family was from somewhere in Asia, but where … that was still a mystery. Her father never told her. Maybe he was ashamed not to be white. Maybe he was ashamed that he had children, especially a daughter. Somewhere inside of her, Lilly knew it was both and more. She just hated to admit it.

And she hated that boy for pointing it out. Life wasn't fair, especially if your name was Lilly Cade.

Sadie called the boy at the door a few unprintable names (names that her folks surely hadn't given her permission to add to her vocabulary yet), kicked him in the shin, and took four of his chocolate bars without asking. Before the boy could slam the door on Sadie's face, Sadie slammed _his own door _on _his own face_. In that moment, Lilly wondered if she'd ever meet anyone as tuff as Sadie Lou Curtis.

"There," Sadie said, dusting off her hands. "I took care of it. You OK, Lil?"

Lilly nodded, but she couldn't make herself say anything. Her throat was killing her. She had too many words to say, but none of them sounded like words. They were mostly noises. Feelings. It wasn't that Lilly didn't encounter boys and girls at school making fun of her for being mixed with … _something_. It was that she didn't expect it to happen on Halloween night, the first night she and Katie were allowed to trick-or-treat without Mrs. Mathews's supervision, and the night she wore her beautiful Snow White dress. It wasn't supposed to happen then. This was supposed to be Lilly's night to feel beautiful. And she didn't.

The girls ambled along in silence for a long time after that. Finally, they made their way back to the Curtis house, which felt like paradise compared to the hellish landscape Lilly felt inside herself on the way there. They walked around to the backyard where, sure enough, they found Soda, Steve, and Two-Bit, each with a can of beer in their hands. Steve had something of a buzz on him, which irked Jane; evidently, Soda didn't care for the taste of beer when he was twelve years old, so he laughed a lot and occasionally dumped his can into the grass, hoping Steve wouldn't notice and call him chicken.

Two-Bit, however, seemed _born _for alcohol. It was a strange and perhaps dangerous thing to say, but at ten years old, Lilly couldn't help but believe it. Clearly, he was the drunkest of the three boys (and really, two, as Soda wouldn't get drunk for the first time until he was about fifteen or sixteen), and he seemed like he ruled the world. He ran around and hollered like he usually would; only now, he seemed somehow freer. Lilly might have admired it if she didn't know what drinking too much could do to a man. She thought about some of the scars Johnny had and shuddered. Surely Two-Bit would never turn out like _that_. He was too much of a Prince Charming.

"Well, would ya look at _that_?" Two-Bit said, whirling around to notice the girls. "Girls!"

"That's what they told us we were, anyway," Sadie said. "How's it goin', Two-Bit?"

Two-Bit sloppily stumbled over to the girls and put his hand on Lilly's shoulder for balance. Even though she was only ten, Lilly wondered if some of the drunken behavior was an act. Two-Bit was nothing if not a comedian.

"Sadie Lou, Sadie Lou, Sadie _Lou_! I have _never _felt better."

"Just wait till the morning. That's what my daddy says, anyhow."

"I don't believe it."

"Believe it."

Two-Bit just let out a massive, deflating laugh and turned on his heels to talk to Lilly. She felt her heart jump into her throat, but after a moment, she felt at ease. It was just Two-Bit. It was just Two-Bit with a bigger smile.

_Why didn't he think he was Happy?_

"Lilly Pad!" he said. "How ya doin', baby?"

Lilly shook her head.

"Not so good."

"How come?"

Lilly told him the story. She told him about the boy who thought she couldn't be a princess because of her eyes. She told him that she wasn't pretty.

"What are you talkin' about?" Two-Bit asked. "You're very pretty!"

"Am not."

"Are too. I mean, you're a little kid, but you're pretty! And you're gonna be even prettier when you grow up."

"But I ain't … I don't look like anybody else here. Even tonight, your own sister said that Jane looked pretty in her costume. She didn't say nothin' about me, and I know I don't look a thing like Jane."

"Katie thinks you're pretty, too. She's just talkin'. Trust me, Lilly Pad. You might not be blonde-haired and blue-eyed, but that don't mean you ain't pretty. Lookin' like Jane ain't the only way to be pretty. You're pretty even if ya don't look like that. Don't let nobody say mean stuff about you. Ya got me?"

Lilly nodded. She started to feel like life was a little fairer, but she knew it wasn't. Life wasn't fair; she wasn't fair. But at least there were a few things that were charming.

* * *

_1964_

Lilly Cade was fourteen years old when she wondered if Two-Bit remembered what he'd said to her on that Halloween night when she was ten.

She doubted it. After all, he'd been quite drunk that night, and it was several years earlier. When he woke up in the morning, he barely remembered where he left his shoes the night before. At least, that was what Katie said when Lilly wondered if he remembered their little talk on Halloween in 1960. Katie sounded so annoyed whenever Lilly brought up boys. Maybe it was because the boy Lilly brought up most was Katie's own brother. In a way, Lilly understood. She knew that Sadie had something of a crush on Johnny just by the look she got in her eyes whenever they stood aside from the crowd and talked about poetry or something like that. But it would have driven her up the wall if Sadie talked about Johnny as much as Lilly talked about Two-Bit.

The reason she thought he must have forgotten about their little talk that Halloween was because now that they were just a little older, Two-Bit exclusively dated blondes. _Blondes_. For Lilly, it was almost sickening to even think about. She tried to forget it, but every time she was at the Mathews house, Two-Bit was either making out with one of his blondes on the couch, or he was talking about one of his blondes with Katie, who was always much more interested in her brother's conversation than Lilly thought was necessary. She and Johnny didn't talk about the girls he liked – well, not often, anyway. She knew he'd had a crush on Sadie for a little while, but he wasn't aware she felt the same way, even when Lilly assured him that she did. But that was different. That was advice. Two-Bit and Katie's conversations about blondes seemed to drag on for hours and hours, almost like they wanted to torture Lilly and run her out of the room.

"Man, I tell ya, Dally's the luckiest one outta all of us," Two-Bit said once when he was in the Mathews living room with Katie and Lilly.

"I don't think anyone's ever said that before," Katie said.

"I meant about Sylvia. Now _there's _a blonde. Kathy's got style. That's for sure. But Sylvia … when ya look at her, ya know what they mean when they say _bombshell. _I'm tellin' ya that."

"Well, then. Tell us how ya really feel, Two-Bit."

"I'm gonna, Katie, don't you worry. Worst part of it is Dally don't even like her that much. We all know he's just tryin' to get Lucy's goat."

Lucy Bennet was another reason why life, for Lilly Cade, wasn't fair. Almost two years earlier, Lucy Bennet had moved into the neighborhood from Detroit. Her father was a college professor, she'd read essentially every book that had ever been published, and she was beautiful. Lucy had fair, creamy skin like Katie, Sadie, and Jane, and even though she was a brunette, Lilly was certain she was the exact brunette that would change Two-Bit's mind about blondes. She couldn't explain it. She could just _feel _it. She could feel it in the way they could joke around with each other. Lilly couldn't joke around with Two-Bit like that. Half the time she wasn't even quite sure what he was trying to make a joke _about_.

"Maybe," Katie said. "How about Jane? She's been a bottle blonde for, what? About a year now?"

"Janie looks good, but she's still Janie."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It _means _she's still Steve's kid sister, and she's still off limits. I know how to play fair. Don't you?"

"I don't know what you think you're talking about."

"I ain't talkin' about nothin'."

Lilly sat there and listened to the Mathews siblings talk like she wasn't even there. She wished she wasn't – that she could disappear – but it was only easy to disappear if you were white, and Lilly most definitely wasn't. She felt it when she'd been "encouraged" to sit in the balcony at the movie house and when that boy told her she had no right to dress as Snow White for Halloween. But she felt it the worst and the most when she listened to Two-Bit talk about all the pretty blondes. She'd never be one of those, and so, she'd never be pretty to the one person who really counted.

Then, Lilly thought about Jane and how Steve had freaked out when she came home from the drugstore with a bottle of peroxide. It was funny until Lilly realized it was genius. If she wanted to be blonde, there was something she could do about it.

Her feet carried her to the drugstore without much thought. She went alone, but she could imagine her friends' voices as she made the trek. Sadie would have worried about Lilly hurting herself. Jane would have fretted because Lilly was copying her. Lucy would have clicked her tongue and said something condescending about modern beauty standards, and Lilly should be proud to look like herself. Carrie would have said something about the moral and ethical implications of changing one's hair. And Katie would have laughed. That would have hurt the most.

Lilly bought the bottle of peroxide without a word. She shimmied her way through the broken storm door at her folks' house and was happy to see they weren't there. She didn't know where they could be, and she only cared a little bit. Before she knew it, she was standing in front of the cracked, dirty bathroom mirror, uncapping the bottle and staring her reflection down.

It was no longer about looking beautiful to the boys and men that she knew. It was about not looking like her father. Because that was the problem – she knew she looked like her father, but she was certain her father didn't know that.

She thought about Johnny, who was at the movies with Ponyboy, seeing _Gone with the Wind _for the second time since they'd put it back out. He looked like their father, too. But where Lilly always thought their father was ugly – not because of his eyes, but because of his heart – but Johnny was his spitting image. She never thought Johnny was ugly; in fact, she always considered her brother to be handsome (for a brother, of course). Maybe she didn't have to look like her father. Maybe she could just look like Johnny.

She put the cap back on the bottle of peroxide and tucked it under her arm. She wasn't going to throw it away. After all, she figured if one of the guys got themselves into trouble one day, they might be able to use it. For now, Lilly Cade would attempt to be proud of herself for having her father's – her _brother's _– eyes. She would attempt to pretend like it was fair, even if she wasn't.

A few moments passed, and Lilly finally gathered enough composure to walk out of the tiny bathroom and into the living room. She planned to leave the house and go find Katie again, maybe to tell her what she'd almost done to herself, but she was surprised. She saw her father sitting on the couch, calmer than she'd ever seen him. He had no beer in his hand. It was the first time in Lilly's recent or distant memory that she'd seen him without a beer in his hand.

She planned to slide past him like she normally would. She assumed he didn't see that she was there. But then:

"Lilly?"

Lilly looked at her father on the couch. He gazed upon her not hatefully, but with confusion. It was like he hadn't seen her in years, and in many ways, he hadn't. It seemed like he was surprised that Lilly was no longer that sobbing infant he didn't ask for, especially less than a year after he hadn't asked for Johnny, but there she was. He seemed surprised that Lilly existed – not that she was still alive, but that she existed. Lilly knew there was a difference. It almost made her want to cry.

It was the first time her father had looked at her – at _anyone _– with kind eyes. It was the first time she really knew how much he and Johnny looked like each other. She wasn't relieved. She was angry. If he could look at her like this once, why couldn't he do it all the time? Why was it fair?

With the foolish bottle of peroxide tucked under her arm, Lilly shrugged at her father and walked out the door.

* * *

_1965_

Lilly Cade was fifteen years old when she was almost sixteen, and she couldn't tell anyone what happened.

It wasn't like it was a _bad thing_. She knew that. There was no reason for her to cry the way she did when Lucy worried that her innocence and reputation were shot. Lilly's reputation and innocence had been shot since the day she was born to a couple of drunks who would have sold her for a couple of cheap beers if they had the option. But she cried for her reputation just the same. She figured it was what everybody wanted her to do.

In truth, that night was one of the best nights of her life. She just couldn't tell anyone. As she fell asleep that night, she wondered what her friends and Johnny would think. Johnny would probably feel sick and never look at Lilly the same way again, which she couldn't bear to think about. Sadie would wonder if she had to kill Two-Bit, and Jane would lament that she and Soda hadn't gone beyond a few deep kisses here or there. Lucy would probably get jealous, as she was still mistaking her affection for Dallas Winston as affection for Two-Bit, and Lilly hated that more than anything. Lucy had enough already; she didn't need Two-Bit's attention, too. Carrie would lecture her about the moral and ethical implications about spending the night with your best friend's older brother (especially when that older brother was eighteen years old already), and possibly, that was the exact lecture Lilly needed. And Katie … well, Katie had seen enough already. That hurt the most.

She tried not to think about the look on Katie's face in the morning when she remembered the night before. Katie had fallen asleep around nine, and Lilly, who'd downed three bottles of Coke throughout the evening, couldn't sleep at all. She anxiously waited on the floor of Katie's bedroom until her neck became too stiff to pretend to be still. Finally, she got up from the ground and began to meander around the Mathews house. Mrs. Mathews was closing down at the bar, and Two-Bit almost never stayed the night at his mom's house anymore. Lilly thought she was alone. Much to her surprise, however, Two-Bit came through the front door just a few minutes later. Even _more _of a surprise, Two-Bit was stone cold sober.

"Lilly?" he asked. "What the hell are you doin' here?"

"I was supposed to have a sleepover with Katie," Lilly said. "She fell asleep early."

"Sounds like Katie. She falls asleep to blarin' music."

They shared a laugh, though it was stiff. Lilly remembered how easy it was to talk to Two-Bit when she was a little girl. Since she'd nearly dyed her hair blonde to impress and attract him, things had been different. Lucy said that she envied little girls and old women because they were fearless; their hormones didn't make them insecure and worried about attracting men to make more people. Although Lilly never would have admitted it out loud, Lucy had more than a few good points there. It was easier to be _Lilly _before she was worried about being attractive. It was easier to be Lilly when all she cared about was loving people and being loved right back. This was different than just love. It was crazy.

"I'm glad you're here," Two-Bit said.

Lilly's eyes went as wide as they could go.

"You are?"

"Well, yeah. You're a tuff girl. I'd never turn down a chance to hang out with you."

Lilly felt the warmth rush to her cheeks. It was still difficult to talk to Two-Bit knowing that she thought he was more than just nice and cute, but it was getting easier. At least it seemed like he saw her as a woman and not a little girl (which was how everyone else, including her own friends, saw her).

"Where were you before?" Lilly asked. "I didn't expect you to be home."

Two-Bit shook his head.

"Kathy kicked me outta her place. She tried talkin' to me about how she wants to go to _college_. Guess I didn't seem interested enough. Guess it was a pattern. That's what she said, anyway."

Lilly nodded. Perhaps it should have been a warning that Two-Bit wasn't in his right mind (and that he wouldn't be for quite some time). But Lilly couldn't help but feel almost relieved. Kathy had had a hold on Two-Bit for long enough to drive Lilly crazy with jealousy. She knew she didn't really have a shot with him, but if he weren't attached to a girl (especially a blonde … too different from Lilly herself), it was easier to pretend like one day, they would find their way to one another. She leaned in closer to him, and he seemed to notice. Better yet, he seemed _happy _to notice.

"I'm sorry," Lilly said, even though she wasn't.

"Ah, it's OK, baby. I knew that couldn't last."

He took a seat on the couch, and Lilly followed. Her heart was beating so loudly she was sure she could hear it. Just like when she'd nearly gone blonde, her feet carried her more than her mind. It felt like the right thing to do. It felt like the only thing to do.

"What about you?" Two-Bit asked.

"Me? What about me?"

"I don't know. You wanna go to college?"

Lilly shrugged.

"I don't really think I have much of a choice. My grades ain't shit, and I ain't got enough money in the bank to make it work, even if I was smart."

"Y'are smart."

"What makes me smart?"

"You know. You look at people, and you know how to make them feel good about themselves."

Lilly felt her cheeks get even warmer. Two-Bit hadn't been this sweet to her since that Halloween when she was ten, and he was thirteen. Things were very different now. For one thing, Lilly hadn't felt like a woman then. Maybe it was better now. She felt like it had to be better once they had migrated to Two-Bit's room and shut the door.

At first, Lilly sat on the bed, and Two-Bit sat on the floor. He was the kind of guy who would give up his bed for a lady because deep down, he was exactly what Lilly wanted him to be when she was a little girl. Two-Bit was a bit of a prince. They talked about how long, exactly, Two-Bit planned to stay in school ("Until they kick me out," he said.). They talked about what Lilly wanted to do with her life after she graduated from high school ("Get married and have a family, I guess," she said.). They talked about how it was obvious Lucy was falling in love with Dally, and Lilly made a comment about how it was absurd that Lucy thought she was in love with Two-Bit.

When Lilly said that, Two-Bit just shook his head. Lilly asked him why. He thought for a moment before he said anything.

"It ain't like Lucy's not lovely," he said.

"She's a brunette."

"Yeah, that don't matter, kid. That ain't it. Lucy's just … she's not for me. She's a little too snappy. You know what I mean?"

Lilly nodded. If anyone knew what he meant, it was one of the girls who were made to sit at lunch with Lucy everyday.

"Only Dally could keep up with a broad like that."

"What sort of girl are you lookin' for?"

Two-Bit was quiet again. He looked down at his hands and clacked the toes of his shoes together, almost like he was a little boy. Lilly could almost remember him as a little boy. He used to be the little boy who swiped boxes of popcorn for her at the movies. In a way, he was still the same kid from back then. It was part of what made him so charming.

"The kinda girl I can really talk to," he said. "The kinda girl who knows me better than anybody else. The kinda girl who's real sweet and doesn't need me to be jokin' around all the time. The kinda girl who'd sit here and ask me what kinda girl I was lookin' for, I guess."

He cocked his eyebrows at Lilly in a way he never had before. Her heart soared right into her throat as she discovered she was equal parts ecstatic and horrified. She wondered if there was a word for that, but she didn't have time to ponder it for very long. Now that Lilly was fifteen and turning sixteen, she knew what that look meant. Two-Bit wasn't just talking to Lilly anymore. He _wanted _Lilly.

She figured he might be her only chance. It helped that she'd harbored a crush on him for longer than she even knew what a crush was, but if Two-Bit was showing even a flicker of interest in her, she had to pounce. So many of the other boys in and around the neighborhood still looked at her like she was last on their list of girls they'd take out for a date. It wasn't that Lilly wasn't pretty. She was. It was that no boy wanted to bring Lilly Cade, a girl who wasn't even sure where the hell her family came from, home for dinner. The mothers in that neighborhood knew what they wanted, even if they were dirt poor. They wanted their sons to have white wives and white children. They might not go to the best schools or wear the prettiest clothing, but at least life would be fair to them.

Before Lilly realized it, Two-Bit stood up from the ground and made his way over to the bed. He sat down next to her, and she felt her palms begin to sweat. She was dizzy, and she might have passed out if not for Two-Bit's hands catching her face. For a long moment, she stared at him and almost smiled. In all the years they'd been looking at each other … in all the years she spent wishing he'd catch her face in exactly this way … she never noticed how brilliant his eyes were.

The other boys in the neighborhood were afraid to bring Lilly home to their mothers because they knew life wasn't fair, and neither was she. But Two-Bit didn't have to worry about that. Lilly had been living in and out of his mother's home since she was a little girl, and she was always welcome. It didn't matter that Lilly didn't look a thing like Kathy or Lucy Bennet or Snow White herself. The only important thing was that she looked like Lilly Cade.

That was the last thing Two-Bit thought before he kissed her for the first time.

After the initial shock of her first-ever kiss wore off, Lilly found himself getting lost in the embrace. Every time she thought it might be over, there was more. The kisses just kept getting deeper. She had always heard that when you kissed a guy like she was kissing Two-Bit, you would taste everything he ate that day. But Lilly didn't taste a thing – just felt the warmth of his tongue against hers, like it was always meant to be there or something. It was a little gross to put into words, but romance, Lilly figured, had to be a little bit gross. More than anything, Lilly was stunned by how easy it was to kiss, even though she'd never done it before. She figured it was because it was Two-Bit. She figured she was always supposed to share that moment with Two-Bit.

The moment suddenly rolled into moments, and before long, Lilly woke up in her best friend's brother's bed, alone. Why was she alone? Where had he gone, and why hadn't he bothered to tell her?

She didn't even have time to worry about whether Two-Bit had changed his mind about her. Katie barged into the room without any warning, looking for Lilly, who'd disappeared from her room the night before. Clearly, Katie found her, and clearly, she thought she knew what had happened. She was disappointed – furious, even. Not once did she stop to get Lilly's side of the story. She simply turned on her heels and ran out the front door, looking for someone to hurt. It was humiliating. Lilly was months older than Katie; she was tired of everyone pretending like she was the baby of the family because she was the smallest. Lilly Cade could take care of herself (except for the moments when she couldn't, which, as Johnny's sister, she'd learned to keep quiet about).

Everyone made assumptions; some people were more correct than others. Everyone seemed destroyed; no one had any right to be because Lilly wasn't. She was thrilled until she saw the look on Katie's face … like Lilly had lost any right to be called her friend. Like Lilly was somehow dirty. Lilly was tired of feeling dirty for being herself. She'd been tired of it since the day she was born and the day she discovered where she was made to live and grow up. She'd chosen to spend that night with Two-Bit without worrying what anyone else in the world thought of her for it, and now, the only thing that was ruined was her freedom. Lilly Cade wasn't _allowed _to have freedom. She wasn't _allowed _to be honest about those fleeting moments and hours where she finally felt like a damn princess, after all those years of trying. She wasn't _allowed _to express herself without feeling the whiplash and the backlash of everyone else trying to protect her. And to think – _she _wasn't even the Cade who'd been jumped and left for dead that summer.

Lilly wasn't allowed to be free. After all, to be free was to be fair.

* * *

_1972_

Lilly Cade was twenty-two years old when she found herself an unmarried mother.

When she was a teenager, she always figured that her path to a family would be fairy typical. She would meet a man (probably Two-Bit Mathews), they would fall desperately in love, get married, and have a few babies whom they loved even more than they loved each other. That was the way it was supposed to go. It had gone that way for the Curtis folks, she figured, though she couldn't say she knew very much about their _inner lives _or whatever you wanted to call it. It had even gone that way for Lucy Bennet and Dallas Winston, and there was nothing either of them hated more than admitting that they were madly in love, even now that they'd been married for seven years. If it could happen for Dallas Winston, surely it could happen for Lilly Cade. Lilly had such love in her heart, and she had such willingness to give it away.

It even looked like she was going to give that love to Two-Bit, after all. They'd spent that night together when Lilly was turning sixteen, and as the years went by, that single night seemed to turn into love. Before Two-Bit shipped out, he confessed to Lilly that had he been able to stay, he probably would have fallen in love with her. Since she was a romantic princess at heart, Lilly remembered those words better than she had ever remembered anything. They kept her hopeful that Two-Bit would come home in a single piece and not two bits. Everyday, she whistled while she worked and thought of those last words she and Two-Bit shared, wondering what else they might come to share and laugh about once he was home again. She'd written that joke about two bits in a letter to him, and she pictured him reading it and chuckling, missing the way Lilly's soft lips grazed the side of his cheek. She wondered if he'd forget about her when he was in Vietnam. She heard the girls over there vaguely looked like her, only they were probably more beautiful. Worse than that, those girls knew where they came from. Lilly was just some displaced mutt with eyes that didn't match the rest of her friends'. But in her heart, she knew Two-Bit was thinking of her. He had to be. She was thinking of him, and when he got back home, they'd fall in love, get married, and have their own children. It was the law of the universe. It was fate.

But it didn't happen.

By the time Two-Bit returned home, he claimed that it was easier not to immediately fall into a romantic relationship with Lilly. It wasn't that he didn't like her, he said. He really did – maybe he even loved her. The problem was that he wasn't in the proper headspace to call a girl his own, and he didn't know when he'd be ready again. As the sweetheart she was, Lilly stepped aside and gave him his space because she loved him. She didn't figure it would take him more than a couple of months to adjust to his return … adjust to the love and affection he felt for her before he left.

But then years went by. Two-Bit hadn't mentioned anything to Lilly about changing the way he felt, so she figured it was about time to give up. Life had never been fair to Lilly Cade. Why should it, all of a sudden, change its mind?

On the very night she asked herself that question, she went out alone, searching for guys to fill the hole in her heart that her one true love (or so she once presumed) had left there. She asked Katie if she was interested in tagging along, but Katie declined. For a long time after that, Lilly assumed her rejection was because Lilly was trying to forget about her feelings for Katie's brother. As it turned out, she wasn't exactly right about that, but it didn't matter. Lilly was out with a single mission (to forget about Two-Bit for the first time in her life, dammit), and by the end of the night, she'd have accomplished it.

In the end, she accomplished it and much more. During the first trimester of Lilly's pregnancy, she was too sick to think about anything very much. She didn't have any time to think of Two-Bit, though she was sure after awhile that he must have thought she was loose. Once the baby was born, she really didn't have time to think of anything else. She needed to make enough money and carve enough time out of her day to spend time with her kid. There wasn't a lot of room to pause and wish for romance.

Lilly Cade's first child was, unsurprisingly, a girl. It seemed that almost everyone in her gang gave birth to a girl first, except for Sadie, whose first baby was Lilly's nephew, Michael Cade. She didn't know who the father was, precisely. She'd gone to a party and slept with the first halfway-decent single young man she could find. His name wasn't important, even though Lucy said it was because she should demand child support from the guy. The only thing that was important about the guy who knocked up Lilly Cade was a white guy. She'd chosen him strategically. A part of her knew she was bound to get pregnant that night, and she hoped that if she chose a white guy, maybe she could spare her child from having those eyes – those eyes that everyone still loved to ridicule, especially in light of the war. She thought of assuring people that her family wasn't Vietnamese, but she wasn't sure if that would be a lie. By the time she was twenty-two, Lilly figured she had no hope of figuring out where her family came from. Her father had died two years earlier – a fight in a bar, someone brought a knife when he wasn't supposed to. That time he'd said her name … right after she tried to dye her hair in 1964 … that was the last time he ever addressed her directly. Life wasn't fair. It wasn't fair because her father was a violent drunk. It wasn't fair because he wasn't around to redeem himself. Lilly thought anyone could redeem themselves if they really wanted to. She never lost hope that even the worst of men might want to. Though she didn't exactly recognize it, that was what was so Snow White about her.

Lilly's eldest daughter, Emily, wasn't precisely white, though she was certainly whiter than her mother. Since Lilly was already a little bit white, and Emily's mostly anonymous father had been completely white, Emily got to reap most of the benefits of being white … except for the eyes. Emily Cade had her mother's eyes. It was a miraculous little thing, however. Though Lilly had spent all the years of her life looking in the mirror, wondering where she came from and what she would look like with a white girl's eyes, wondering if looking different meant looking ugly … she didn't feel a single ounce of that anxiety when she saw those eyes on her own little girl. There was nothing on Emily's body that could ever be construed as ugly, Lilly believed. Her daughter was strictly beautiful.

From the moment Emily was born, Lilly resolved to make everything in life fairer for her than it had been when Lilly was a child. Emily had no father, not even on her birth certificate, and Lilly decided it was fairer that way. If Emily never knew a father, she would never be disappointed when she realized not all fathers were awful people. Lilly wondered if maybe that was part of her fascination with princesses like Snow White. Snow White's father died before she ever got to know him. He was absent – a specter hanging above her head, making her wonder what might have been if he had lived a full life. Perhaps Lilly was envious of that. Perhaps it was harder to live in a house with a father who didn't care that you were there than it was to go home to an empty living room. It wasn't an original line of thought, but it was what Lilly felt, and that had to be enough.

Lilly also resolved to give Emily a middle name. Neither she nor Johnny had one because no one had cared enough to think of one. Her other friends (the ones lucky enough to have pretty middle names, like Sadie Lou and Lucy Victoria) assured her that having a middle name wasn't all that special. For Lilly, it was. She wasn't sure what the middle name would be before she saw the baby. As soon as she held Emily in her arms and got a good look at her tiny face, Lilly knew. She wrote it proudly on the birth certificate: Emily Hope Cade. Nothing gave Lilly more hope for the world than the fact that this little girl was now part of it. She hoped that for Emily, life would be fair.

On Emily's first birthday, Lilly had pooled enough money together to buy a few cookies from the local bakery to celebrate. Emily had been keeping down solid foods for some time, and it seemed like a good way to celebrate. It might not have been as festive or as sweet as Elenore Winston's first birthday party, at which Darry made a whole cake for Elenore to stuff her little face in, but things were different by the time Emily turned one in 1972. Darry was married with two kids, including his stepson, and he didn't have time to make cakes for other people's babies anymore. Lucy and Dally had been living in New York since Lucy's graduation from TU in 1970. Everything was different. Maybe that wasn't fair, but since Emily hadn't known anything before her first birthday, Lilly thought she could figure out a way to make it fair. She was on her way out the front door, Emily in tow, on her way to buy the cookies, when she opened the door on Two-Bit Mathews and a full chocolate cake.

"What are you doing here?" Lilly asked. She and Two-Bit rarely spent time together anymore. It was still awkward after his return from Vietnam in '68. Lilly thought they might be able to move on, but she was wrong. At least, by '72, she assumed she was wrong.

"It's Emily's first birthday," he said. "You can't have a birthday without cake."

Emily let out a giggle, like somehow she knew Two-Bit was right.

"You remembered my daughter's birthday?" Lilly asked.

"'Course I did. She's part of this family now, ain't she? I don't forget about family."

"You ain't never come 'round like this before. Why now?"

Two-Bit didn't have an answer. Maybe he'd finally decided to be happy. Lilly doubted it. She knew it wasn't that simple … else she might have had a real father when she was a little girl. Sometimes, she wondered if she was wrong about Emily not having a father. Maybe that wasn't fair after all.

"I don't know," he said. "Just seemed like a good time."

Lilly bit her lip. There was something about Two-Bit that just always wanted to make her smile, even when he was acting like a piece of work. No matter what he'd been through, he still had a bit of a Prince Charming in him. Lilly finally let go and grinned, her eyes flickering toward the cake in his hand.

"Where'd ya get that, anyway?"

"This?"

"Yeah, that. Did ya swipe it from the bakery or somethin'?"

"Lilly Pad, Lilly Pad, _Lilly Pad_. Does this look like a professional cake?"

Lilly giggled (so Emily followed suit) and shook her head. She was feeling more like that fearless little girl again. Maybe that was part of raising a fearless little girl herself.

"No, it looks awful."

"Exactly. I made this cake myself, Lilly. And I think it's important we all go back inside so we can try it."

Emily clapped her hands together as though she understood what that meant. Lilly took a deep breath.

"What's goin' on?" she asked. "Why now?"

Two-Bit shrugged. He never really had an answer for the choices he made. He just knew that when the time was right for him, then it was right. He shouldn't have expected Lilly Cade to stand there and wait for him for all these years … a lifetime, really, when he thought about it. But there she was. And she was still smiling at him.

"Ah, c'mon, Lil," he said. "You know that don't matter. The only thing that matters is that I'm here, and so are you. It's your baby's first birthday. Now, can I fuckin' come in?"

Another slow grin crept across Lilly's face. She was going to let Two-Bit inside. He'd spent all that time preparing a cake for Emily's birthday, and even though the cake would surely taste terrible, he'd still put in all the effort. He'd still spent all the time on it. To let him in was only fair.

She stepped aside, and he whooped as he made it past the doorway. As she closed the door behind him, Lilly couldn't help but think that things were going to be a lot different between the two of them from then on.

* * *

_2018_

Lilly Cade was almost sixty-eight years old when she finally learned where her family was from.

It was something she complained about all her life … the mystery she didn't think she'd ever solve. Finally, for Christmas, just a couple months before she turned sixty-eight, she received a strange gift from her twins, Aurora and Angel.

In truth, Aurora and Angel _themselves _were the strangest Christmas gift Lilly had ever received. After Emily's first birthday in 1972, Lilly and Two-Bit began to spend a lot of time together. Eventually, that time turned into the love that Lilly always hoped it would, and they married several years later. Much to Lilly's happiness, they had a _real _wedding, with a dress and flowers and a small menu for their small number of guests. Since Emily was about four when they finally tied the knot, they figured they weren't likely to have more children. Then, on Christmas Day in 1980, she gave birth to twins – a girl, Aurora, and a boy, Angel. Lilly joked that every generation was meant to have a pair of male-and-female twins. She just never figured she'd be the one to have them.

But on Christmas Day in 2018, Lilly discovered that her younger children had purchased a DNA test for her so she could finally learn where she came from … why life wasn't always fair. She scrunched up her nose at it at first, not sure that she could trust it, but she spit into the little test tube, anyway.

"Look at it this way, Lilly Pad," Two-Bit said. "You've been tryin' to crack this case your whole life. We ain't gonna live forever. Ain't this the thing you wanna know before ya finally kick it?"

Lilly nodded and handed the package over to Angel, who agreed he would be the one to mail it. The twins knew that their mother _hated _post offices ever since she tried to mail a care package to Elenore Winston back in 1995. Elenore was a single mother who never revealed her child's paternity, and for that, Lilly always felt some sort of connection to her.

But Two-Bit was right. Life was too short not to crack all the cases and solve all the mysteries, especially the one that had been gnawing at her since she looked into the mirror and realized how different she looked from all of her friends. But it was no longer a matter of different. It was no longer a matter of whether or not she could call herself _ugly_. By the time she was sixty-eight years old, Lilly knew the truth. She was beautiful. She had always been beautiful. She'd simply spent too many years listening to morons and racists pretend like she wasn't. It was time. It was time she learned where she had earned her beauty. That was only fair.

"I'm sick of not knowing," Lilly said. "Here's hopin' I don't kick it before the results come back."

It had been two years since the family lost Sodapop. The possibility and threat of death had always been real to them, growing up on the most dangerous streets in town and knowing some of the deadliest young guys in the state of Oklahoma … but it had never touched them and crushed them the way it did when they were old, and one of them finally bit the dust. Life was too short for Lilly not to know where she came from.

A few weeks later, the results came back in the mail. She gathered her whole family around the kitchen table as she opened the envelope. Her hands were shaking, and so were Two-Bit's. Emily looked like she might burst into tears, and the twins were holding their breath. It wasn't that they were about to receive good or bad news. It was that they were about to _know_. That, onto itself, was monumental.

And then, they knew. They were English, French, and Filipino.

They cheered and clapped. Emily cried. Lilly might have if she wasn't so overwhelmed by the scene unfolding in front of her. She had a husband who could still be mistaken for Prince Charming. She had three beautiful children who could stand her (and even love her) enough to sit around the kitchen table while she solved the mystery of where she was from. Her brother was still alive, living down the street with his beautiful wife, and she could easily pick up the phone to tell him the good news. They were English, French, and Filipino. They weren't _different_. They were English, French, and Filipino. Those were _names_. They made _sense_.

It was _fair_.

* * *

**That's what we call a wrap!**

**Thanks for reading this character study of Lilly. It wasn't as deep as I wanted it to be, but I've no doubt that I'll explore a lot of interesting avenues with this character and her relationships to the originals now that I've completed this little exercise. There were a few things in here that I didn't even know were going to happen in the 'A&A' universe until I sat down to write this one shot, so at least there was that. Hopefully, the rest of it turned out all right.**

**Hinton owns **_**The Outsiders**_**. Disney owns their iteration of Snow White. I own these fuzzy **_**Harry Potter **_**pajama pants, but I don't own the logo on them. Again, we're falling down a rabbit hole …**

… **And that might have been a clue.**


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